Study Shows Thinking Apple Makes You Think Differently

The power of branding has reached a new level, ladies and gentlemen. As some of you know, my favorite example of brand identity is Apple because they are so incredibly consistent with it. Well, a new study shows the forbidden-fruit-folks may be even better than I had imagined. According to Duke University and the University of Waterloo merely thinking about Apple can make you more creative.

Here’s the skinny:

341 university students were told they were taking a “visual acuity test,” where they were asked to track a multicolored box on a screen while keeping a tally of numbers that appeared in the center, reports CNET.

Unbeknownst to them, the students were sometimes exposed to either an Apple logo or an IBM logo for 30 milliseconds before the box appeared.

After the test, they were asked to list all the uses for a brick they could think of.

The subjects exposed to the Apple logo averaged 30 percent more brick ideas than their IBM counterparts, according to researchers. An independent set of reviewers also deemed these ideas to be more creative.

Meanwhile, the IBM subjects all had “strikingly similar answers.”

While one of the Duke professors involved in the study hesitates to directly link creativity to the use of Apple products, he does conclude that powerful brands can and do affect people’s unconscious behavior.

If you read my blog, you probably already believe that brand loyalty impacts our decisions. (If not, you may want to consider a new line of work!) But, this really is pretty cool. To think creative is to be creative.

The study will be published in the April issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

Jennifer Jones-Mitchell

A global leader in social media marketing, Jennifer Jones-Mitchell has been at the center of traditional and digital PR since the mid 90s and has helped launch some of the world's most loved brands. She has been blogging about PR and social media marketing since 2007. Learn more at: www.jenniferjonesmitchell.com